French Officer of the Colonial Infantry in campaign dress

This officer wears a Modele Aiglon tunic with a closed collar typically seen in the mid-1930s. His collar patches and his Adrian 26 helmet carries the symbol / badge of an anchor, indicating that he is part of a colonial unit.

The French Army made widespread use of its colonial subjects to redress the shortfall of manpower in metropolitan France, following the heavy losses in WW1 and the subsequent dramatic fall in the birth rate in the inter-war years. In 1940, units from its colonies in North Africa, West Africa and French Indo-China (now Vietnam) were a highly significant element of French ground forces.